Board votes 5-3 against resolution along partisan lines
The Miami-Dade School Board meeting Wednesday was painful. It was ugly. And so sad.
Traumatizing might be an apt description for many people there.
It was eight hours or so worth of a debate over a proclamation of October as LGBTQ History Month, a debate that never should have been, between people who only want to be recognized and given a right to exist in this 2023 world and those who would deny them that based on religion or “family values” — apparently meant for only some families — or some neanderthal opinion that a banner celebrating the achievements of gay Americans could turn their kids gay.
The concept was rejected along partisan lines.
It got very aggressive. People used words like grooming, pedophile, pervert, indoctrination, communism. And those were the God-fearing religious people. They compared a Pride month to Sodom and Gomorrah.
There was some very passionate arguments made on both sides. Clueless parents talked and yelled about having the right to tell their children (or not) about homosexuality. Many said the month would confuse kids about their own sexuality. A few outright said it was a way to recruit. Gay students talked about being bullied and having someone at a school save their lives.
Among those who spoke on behalf of the designation were State Rep. Joe Geller, Miami Beach Commissoner Alex Fernandez and former North Miami Councilman Scott Galvin, Executive Director of Safe Schools South Florida, a non-profit focusing on providing safe space for LGBTQ youth.
If the decision had been based on who had the better argument, the result might have been different. But this was a partisan, woke wars vote.
Read related: Miami-Dade School Board gets extreme makeover with two hard right newbies
The irony of the National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month banner across the dais and the Proud Boys harassing the LGBTQ speakers and allies out front was not lost on most of the kids. Get it? Proud boys?
Less than 48 hours after their fearless leader is sentenced to 22 years for his part in the Jan. 6 insurrection, this exclusively male, far-right neo-fascist militant organization that promotes and engages in political violence felt the need to intimidate gay teens.
One skinny girl in glasses, Madeline something from Miami Beach, shook as she failed to hold back tearful gasps of air. She couldn’t believe the “homophobic rhetoric” she was hearing.
“People here told me how my very being is biologically unnatural,” she said as others in the LGBTQ community and School Board Member Lucia Baez-Geller, who sponsored the resolution to make October LGBTQ+ History Month, ran to stand by her. The girl made Ladra cry.
Baez-Geller, who won’t seek re-election next year, also sponsored the Pride Month resolutions in 2021, which passed almost unanimously, and last year, which failed after she was the sole yes vote. The difference: The culture wars, Baez-Geller said. Board members blamed the new Parental Rights In Education law (read: Don’t Say Gay) that Gov. Ron DeSantis so proudly passed as part of his far right agenda.
Read related: School Board rejects LGBTQ+ History Month as casualty of ‘Don’t Say Gay’
But this year, the school board attorney said the resolution was in line with the law and it specifically stated that it did not include any curriculum or instructional materials.
“We just sat here and listened for eight hours that this is illegal. It is not,” Baez-Geller said. “The way that it is written, makes it not. It is symbolic. It is non binding. And it is asking is to show support to students and I do not think that is too much to ask in this day and age.”
She said the opposition was “part of a bigger picture. It’s a part of an anti LGBTQ agenda in Tallahassee.
“You have heard all the things said about me, a 20-year educator… because of that misinformation is causing people to call me a groomer, pedophile and pervert.”
Critics didn’t believe it, saying that it would be hard to keep the “celebration” out of the classroom. Many board members didn’t believe it either, saying that is why they were voting against it again, because it ran afoul of the law.
Guess they’re going to have to fire their general counsel if his advice is so useless.
But that’s not why they really voted against it close to 1 a.m. Thursday morning.
“This was never a topic wen I was growing up in schools,” said School Board Member Robert Alonso.
“We talk about bullying. I was bullied as a child. I was overweight and they called me ‘Fat boy.’ But my parents didn’t come to the schools to ask for a ‘Fat boy’ day of recognition at school,” Alonso said. “My parents came and said, ‘Son, life is cruel. You will face adversity.
“This is about sexual preference. Do we celebrate or dedicate another month or day to any other sexual preference? It’s not legal nor is it our place as the third largest school district in the country to be discussing these topics.”
Two of the school board members who voted against it, Alonso and Monica Colucci, were hand-picked for their respective elections by DeSantis and two others, Mary Blanco and Dan Espino, were appointed by him. Chairwoman Mari Tere Rojas, the Republican sister-in-law of Congressman Carlos Gimenez, also voted against it. The three members who voted in favor of the resolution were Baez Geller, Luisa Santos and Dorothy Bendross Mindingall.
LGBTQ History Month debate back at Miami-Dade School Board with vitriol added by Ladra on
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